Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Even before awareness of the pandemic I’d begun to think much more deeply about the trees. And I’m already outdoors and living in relationship with wildness much more than most people I know. And it’s true, too, that my mind’s been in Richard Powers’ The Overstory for a while now.

Photo as usual by Debi.

And from the beginning I’ve thought that the task at hand is actually promoting health more than avoiding illness (for ourselves and others). And that health, as Wendell Berry says, is much more than etymologically connected to wholeness.

What happens—what do we suppose will happen—when we systematically tear apart the organic wholeness of the earth? When we think (and act accordingly) as if we’re some kind of Lord Man species apart?

And now personal tragedies notwithstanding (and last night I lost the first person to Covid-19 whom I’ve known personally), we’re in the midst of a Great Pause in terms of the shut-down of our insane destructive anthropocentric global economic system. In this Pause will we finally learn to properly assess causation? Will we learn to choose the brightest, most sane, most unselfish future among the futures (short or long) available to us as a species? Will we finally learn to unsuicide?

But in lieu of that longer reflection, here’s a primary source. I’ve already referred to it obliquely a couple times before, including by quoting its last line as a final recommendation in terms of “best practices” during this (or any) time.

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Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.